1. Technical Field
The present invention relates to a technique for supporting management or handling of an article in a life space, i.e., a space in which human beings live, such as an ordinary house, office, hotel, store, hospital, or the like.
2. Background Art
Conventionally, robots have been used effectively in a broad variety of fields. For example, a robot having an article grabbing mechanism is used on an automated production assembly line in a factory for grabbing/carrying parts or in an automated warehouse for carrying/managing stocked merchandise. Such application of the robot has an abundant number of examples.
The shape of such industrial robots is limited more or less to a rectangular parallelepiped, or the like, even when they handle articles of the same shape and size or have some flexibility. A technique of using a robot in view of such circumstances for improving the efficiency in a carrying operation has been disclosed. A typical example disclosed in Document 1 (see below) is a robot system for loading/unloading articles.
(Document 1) Japanese Laid-Open Patent Publication No. 7-237159
(Document 2) Japanese Laid-Open Patent Publication No. 2000-238906
(Document 3) Japanese Laid-Open Patent Publication No. 2000-127070